About

dBud - Volume adjustable earplugs with clear, safe sound

$132,060

pledged of $50,000 goal

2,171

backers

Noise pollution is a global and rapidly growing issue. Consistent elevated sound levels, whether at work or in your free time, can cause problems like hearing impairment, hypertension, ischemic heart disease, annoyance and sleep disturbance. Add to that constant headphone listening, often at levels set to exceed the noises around you, and it's no wonder as many as one billion young people worldwide are at risk of hearing loss.

Featuring an advanced acoustic filter and volume slider, dBud is an ear plug designed to protect your ears from harmful noise while giving you a crisper, clearer listening experience. With the slide of a button you can adjust the amount of decibels you want to filter out, allowing you to set the appropriate sound level for your environment. dBud simply brings you clear, safe sound!

As you probably saw we sent out a survey a few days back asking you to rate six ideas for stretch goals. We got as many as 542 responses from backers which shows a tremendous engagement. Thank you!

The two highest scoring ideas were:
1. Including an additional set of high attenuation / audiophile foam tips to complement the current silicone tips.
2. Making dBud compatible with most standard silicone- or foam tips (like Comply foam tips).

We’ve decided that if you help us reach $100,000 we will make both of these ideas reality, and we’ll include the additional high quality foam tips FOR FREE with your order (1 set for every dBud ordered), making an already great deal even better.

For this to happen we have to reach $100,000 and we need YOUR HELP to get there. You can help us reach our stretch goal by sharing this campaign with every single person you know. Our faith is in your hands good people!

dBud's two stage volume slider enables you set the appropriate attenuation for your environment. In open position noise reduction is about 15 dB and in closed position about 30 dB.

Due to a logarithmic relationship, increasing volume with as little as 6 dB will double the sound pressure exerted on your ears. Your ears however, will perceive a doubling of volume for every 10 dB increase in sound pressure.

In open position dBud reduces the perceived volume with around 65% and actual sound pressure with as much as 97%. In closed mode the perceived volume reduction is about 87.5% and actual reduction of sound pressure as much as 99.9%.

It's pretty clear that wearing ear plugs make a huge difference to the safety of your ears!

Designed for everyday life, dBud earplugs are the perfect companions for anyone with a need to tone down the volume of your surroundings. Whether you’re a musician, concert goer, DJ, bartender or kindergarten teacher, dBud can help improve quality of life through protecting your ears while giving you a better experience hearing your environment.

The best earplugs are the ones you carry with you, so we made it easy for you to bring dBud wherever you go. Wear them in style around your neck, ready to use wherever you are. Or in your pocket using the sleek carrying case.

When life gets too loud, just plug in and tune out. A simple slide and dBud lets you set the volume of the world around you. Quality of life at your fingertips!

With built in magnets dBud snaps easily around your neck.

dBud's neat carrying case easily fits in your pocket.

To achieve clear sound with precise noise filtration our engineers developed a unique solution consisting of three main components - an acoustic mesh, volume slider and eq-core. There are no electronics involved, it's a purely mechanical design. The benefit - no circuit boards that can break down and no batteries to replace. It just works, always.

The human ear is designed to naturally amplify frequencies around 2-4 kHz, i.e. human speech. When using ear plugs in general you fill out the void in your outer ear and remove most of this natural amplification. With most other earplugs you’ll notice this as the surrounding sounds becoming muffled and unclear.

dBud gives you retained clarity of hearing, with adjustable volume.

By sharing this project you will help us protect the ears of thousands of people around the world, while providing them with a crisper, clearer listening experience!

Already from the start, our goal was to create an earplug that would be both functional, beautiful and comfortable enough to wear all day. An earplug that you'd be proud to wear, whenever and wherever you go. We wanted a design slim enough to fit inside of your ear without protruding, and despite its small size still be iconic and fashionable. We were intrigued by the challenge of disrupting status quo and reshape the idea of what en earplug should be like. We couldn't be more proud of the end result.

dBud was designed around beautiful simplicity, with clean geometrical shapes enhancing its functionality, while the interior structure reveals a complex combination of materials and acoustic chambers powering its great performance.

All ears are different, even on the same head. They come in all shapes and sizes. This starting point was a great challenge when developing dBud, especially since comfort and secure fit were key priorities.

We've spent months concepting, building, testing and evaluating prototypes in a large number of ears, just to get the right fit. It's been a long and hard iterative process to get to where we are today. But it was all worth it, we're so proud of what we're presenting here on Kickstarter.

Developing new products is an intense, costly and highly time consuming activity. Kickstarter is a great platform to take in early feedback from potential customers, making sure we’re on the right track and helping us validate if there’s enough people wanting to buy our products, before we spend the big bucks and start production.
We encourage all our backers to come with comments, ideas and suggestions on our products. There’s always room for improvement and our continuous mission is to deliver the the best possible products for you.

We’re Ear Labs and our mission is to protect your ears while giving you a safer, clearer and more personal listening experience. Our team has an extensive background in design and development of consumer electronics, and acoustic products in particular.

We’ve collected more than 25 years of experience working in big companies like Nokia, Sony and Samsung. We have the knowhow and network, tools and processes in place to take products to market on time and at the right quality.

We’re working closely with ABOVE, Europe’s leading agency within design and development of consumer products, providing access to world class product designers and engineers and allowing us to scale our team and competencies on demand.

Risks and challenges

With years of experience in project management, design and manufacturing of consumer products, we know the processes well and also the risks involved. We have launched two successful Kickstarters in the past and always delivered our products on time.

Production & supplier management.
Making a working prototype is one thing but manufacturing a product in large volumes is another. Unexpected issues do pop up every now and then with risk of adding cost and causing delays in production.

With a background in companies like Nokia and Sony our team is used to handle large scale projects, literally managing production lines churning out several hundred thousand products per week. We have the tools and processes in place to manage quality, timely deliveries and we have the experience to solve any potential surprises down the road.

Shipping.
With previous experience from retail we know how much work it takes and how hard it is to manage world wide shipments without eating up too much profit while ensuring timely deliveries to our customers.

We are working with Shipwire and use their strategically located warehouses to ensure great local service with global reach. This setup gives us full control over shipments to a reasonable cost manageable effort.

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